


when you left last night

by drashian



Series: Roots and Wings [1]
Category: Marvel Cinematic Universe
Genre: Alcohol Abuse/Alcoholism, Multi, Other, Parent Death, Parenthood, Pregnancy, Trans Character, Transgender
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-01-26
Updated: 2014-01-26
Packaged: 2018-01-09 23:26:52
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,552
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1152081
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/drashian/pseuds/drashian
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Pippin grew up a natural disaster, a certified danger to all flammable objects, and as bright and quick to burn out as any proper Stark. It just wasn't supposed to be Bruce talking her out of her teenage self-destruction.</p>
            </blockquote>





	when you left last night

**Author's Note:**

> _i was so excited to_   
>  _do such normal things with you_   
>  _when you left last night_   
>  _with your toothbrush dry_
> 
>  
> 
>  
> 
> So my friend and I have this really big AU where the Avengers all have kids and it's really sappy and stereotypical but bear with me because it's actually pretty cool. We have some other stuff [here](http://rootsandwingsuniverse.tumblr.com) you can check out.
> 
> Because it's me, Tony and Pepper are trans. Duh.
> 
> Warnings for alcoholism, (trans) male pregnancy, character death, and general angst.
> 
> (Title is from [this song](http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hbnsxYh_dIo).)

It was only fitting that Fury was the first to know. And, of course, his first call was Steve.

Steve’s face drained as he held the comm to his ear and, in clumsy fingers slow motion, he called Natasha. He explained the situation with faltering words. His face remained still as he found a TV and started to watch the news feed.

Natasha was with Clint. They shared a slow look, every emotion passing through a few seconds of eye contact, and then they called Thor. If Fury knew, S.H.I.E.L.D. knew, so Coulson knew, and Thor was easy. Thor would be upset but manageable. Clint shook his head once and Natasha knew she was the one who would have to tell Bruce. She called him with hesitant breaths.

He picked up and she figured that meant he didn’t know. “Bruce, something’s happened.”

“The news is going crazy. There was an explosion, they don’t know what’s going on.” His voice was high and whining.

“Bruce. Listen. They’re—“

“No.”

Natasha sighed. “I wouldn’t be calling you if it wasn’t true.”

Bruce sighed and Nat knew he was holding it together just long enough to hang up the phone.

\- - -

Tony’s eyes lit up as Bruce came into his room, closed the door behind him and immediately ran his fingers through Tony’s hair. “Oh my God,” Bruce said. “You weren’t pulling an elaborate prank.”

“Would I do something like that?” Tony laughed and Bruce kissed his mouth, running his fingers over Tony’s belly.

“Yeah.” Bruce had his thoughts about this—Tony’s disappearance, Pepper’s vague lies to the press—but he knew that more than anything, Pepper had wanted a baby. And Tony had too, just in a roundabout I’m-going-to-be-a-terrible-father-but-I-really-want-to-try-anyway kind of way. And he felt so warm thinking of the two of them, even the three of them, passing something down because even though Pepper would never say it and Tony would deny it ‘til he died, the best thing they had was how much they could love.

Bruce kissed Tony again and laid his hand on Tony’s belly and, just for a second, felt something move under his palm. He smiled and Tony grinned and for as much as Tony looked like a twelve-year-old boy who’d just found ten dollars on the street he also was starting to look like a father.

\- - -

The Hulk destroyed two floors of Stark Tower before he started to slow. No one was stupid enough to get in his way. He left two rooms untouched. One was Tony’s bedroom.

He had knocked down the door and seen the room, seen Tony’s clothes and Pepper’s perfume bottle and Bruce’s toothbrush and turned around.

In front of him, tiny and afraid—but not of the Hulk but like she had just learned what the fear of God meant—was Pippin, come out of her untouched room across the hall. She looked up at the Hulk’s face and started to cry.

The Hulk scooped her up and cradled her, suddenly all out of smashing power and as they reached the couch, his body shrunk and he was pale and weak and shaking and Bruce held the eight year old girl close to his chest as he sunk into the cushions, too tired and too sad to cry.

No one woke them for hours, only coming to brush dust off Bruce’s forehead and drape them in blankets. Unspoken rules said the only people allowed in the tower were Avenger.

Somewhere on another, less broken floor, the other four sat in silence, arms and shoulders and legs touching to remind each other they were real. The news was on but muted. They all watched as bodies were retrieved from the conference hall in morbid curiosity.

When they emerged, Pippin was clutching Bruce around the neck, mostly asleep and Bruce was wrapped in a blanket and nothing much else and his eyes were bruised and red. Steve intercepted them as they came into the living room and took Pippin, cradled her in his arms, laid her out on a chair and tucked her under a throw blanket. Natasha put her arms around Bruce’s shoulders and pulled him into the middle of the rest of them.

\- - -

Pippin grew up with orange hair that was always tangled and dirty because half her childhood was under a car hood or behind a welder’s mask. She was tall and strong and had probably the best combat education a kid could ask for. She was good at coding but better at chemistry, a genius at robotics but legendary at physics. Pippin could walk in heels by the time she was thirteen but she’d been working on Bruce’s coursework he’d dug out of the university servers for at least four years. She was as beautiful as Pepper and as destructive as Tony and everything she touched turned to dust or the newest military innovation.

But she was probably the best in a lab, hair tied back and collaborating with her Bruce. She drank tea, not coffee, and even if she loved her AC/DC and Black Sabbath, her iPod still had a suspicious amount of alt rock.

Pippin first started to drink her father’s whiskey when she was fourteen. Bruce didn’t find out for a whole week.

He had found the bottle under her bed, half empty, after a cryptic tip from JARVIS. The label had Tony’s name scrawled on the corner and Bruce had waited on her bed, turning the bottle over in his hands, until she got home.

She had cried and told him that all she wanted was to be Tony. That every year on that anniversary she felt like the world was watching her to become his replacement.

“Pippin, I loved Tony. But God, I never want someone to be him. Don’t make those mistakes.”

The liquor cabinet was cleared after that but Bruce knew that when she came home from school smelling of smoke he wasn’t going to be able to stop her.

\- - -

When Pippin was a baby, Tony and Pepper’d left Bruce to babysit and, well, he’d never really dealt with kids for that long so after about ten minutes he had no idea what he would do. Pippin had climbed on the couch and pulled herself in his lap and, even though he shrunk away from her surprisingly strong hands, she’d pulled herself up and grabbed his hair and onto his shoulders. Up there she’d ridden all day until she finally fell asleep.

The next day when everyone was home again, she looked at her parents with wide blue eyes and pointed at him and asked, “Bruce?” It was her first word. Pepper and Tony were delighted.

Bruce was hers. And eventually, the Hulk was hers too, but that was another story. Tony was her daddy and her idol and Pepper was her mother and her strength and Steve was her favorite uncle but Bruce was just _hers_.

\- - -

The bags under her eyes grew darker and despite all of Bruce's best attempts at offering himself as a safe place, Pippin's days were consumed by staying inside all day on her computers and sneaking out at night. JARVIS and Bruce silently agreed to let her. Bruce knew if he held her too long she would explode.

She slipped out of the lives of her pseudo-siblings. Steve had ended up a single father and a few years later, even Clint and Natasha had attempted to settle down (though sometimes Bruce suspected it was all an elaborate S.H.I.E.L.D. mission to breed the next generation of super assassins).

Jim Rogers, who had been her prepubescent constant companion, didn't see her any more. Sometimes things would pop up in the tabloids, and Bruce would hand them to her and look at her sternly and if there was one thing Pippin couldn't stand up to, it was a disappointed look from Bruce.

Sometimes, when he came to check on her at night and she was actually still in the Tower at four a.m. and she was watching something on low volume under the covers and nearly asleep, Bruce would gently pull the tablet from her hands and she would call him Dad. That didn't happen during the waking hours. He wasn't sure she'd ever be that vulnerable intentionally, it just spilled out of her mouth when she couldn't help it.

\- - -

Pippin was seventeen when she got arrested.

Bruce bailed her out and the charges didn't really go anywhere but he looked at her in the car ride home and said, "No more." and she nodded.

She didn't sneak out again, just sat on the balcony above Manhattan and watched people and cars move like toys and chain smoked. Bruce joined her after two nights alone.

"I wish I could be him," she whispered hoarsely. The setting sun caught her hair and turned it from copper to gold.

Bruce shook his head. "I don't."

"You loved him. You loved him more than anyone, and you both loved my mom, and now he's gone and you'll never get him back and I'm a poor fucking replacement."

Bruce put an arm around her back, pulling her hip and shoulders close to his. "I don't want another Tony, I don't want another Pepper. I just want you, Pip."

She nodded and dropped her cigarette butt to the street far below.

Bruce sighed. "I'm never going to love someone like I loved them. I don't... I don't think anyone will ever know me quite as easily as Tony knew me. But I have you. And God dammit, you're my daughter and I love you and I don't want you to crash and burn."

Pippin looked up at him, her eyes blue and watery. "Your daughter?"

"You know what I mean." Bruce tucked her head under his chin and closed his eyes and allowed himself to cry with her.

"Yeah, I do," she whispered into his chest.

She called him Dad sometimes when she was fully awake, too, after that. Only when they were alone.

\- - -

"Look, you might not be her dad but you're definitely more than just an uncle. I want you in her life." Pepper wrapped her arms around Bruce's waist and kissed his cheek from behind. "You're gonna be fine."

Bruce smiled to himself and shrugged. "Are you sure?"

"I know it. You will be the best second daddy our baby could ever have."

Bruce just hoped he could be half the parent that Pepper was sure to be.

\- - -

"Pippin, there is something that requires your attention in the workshop," JARVIS said and it was literally the middle of the night and Pippin decided hey, what the hell. She took the elevator to her workshop and rubbed her eyes. Near the far wall a familiar silhouette waited.

She started to run toward it as the word "Dad?" escaped her lips but stopped before she collided. The lights came on. It wasn't the Iron Man suit. Pippin had been the one to order all of them destroyed when she found they were being hidden in the workshop walls. She was ten.

She noticed with what amusement she could muster that her suit was a couple inches taller than the original Iron Man. It was sleeker and colored gold with red accents instead of the reverse. The arc reactor in its chest glowed to life and Pippin fought back tears.

"I call it Iron Sides. Mark 1." JARVIS sounded proud. She grinned and tears spilled out. The chest cavity started to open and she laughed nervously before entering the open suit.

"Happy birthday," JARVIS said from the internal speakers and she remembered yes, it was just past midnight, she was 18 now. The suit closed around her and she moved her fingers experimentally, took a few steps. In perfect Stark fashion, she immediately shot out a glass wall panel with her arm thruster.

JARVIS took her through her paces, helping her keep her balance while flying, pointing out all the ways it was faster than the Iron Man had ever been, showed her the secret weapons, the knives that came from the ribs and the missiles on the forearms. She emerged from the suit a couple hours later, shaky and tired and still crying a bit.

"Thank you, JARVIS. This was... this was the best. Seriously." She watched the suit go into its cavity in the wall.

"You're welcome, Pippin." She had actually had to rewrite his programming so he wouldn't call her ma'am. "And now, I must ask something from you."

No one noticed the next morning, which was funny because this weird family group home they ran really should have known right away. It wasn't until that night when Steve called out to JARVIS and got no response did anyone ask her what was going on.

She almost kept herself from crying when she told them she'd turned him off permanently.

\- - -

Bruce, holding a rare glass of champagne, toasted Pippin as she watched the night skyline and pulled at her curls with manicured nails.

“Happy birthday,” he said, smiling genuinely at her. “Though I seem to remember that eighteen is not, actually, the drinking age around here.”

She rolled her eyes. “Let me have some fun, Bruce,” she said. They stood in silence on the chilly rooftop for another minute, escaping the party below together. She was better than him at this whole public persona thing but she had not completely escaped the influence of his introversion.

She smoothed over her dark blue dress. “Hey, Bruce, can I ask you something? Even if it sounds stupid?”

“Of course.”

“Was… I mean okay, I have access to basically all of my dad’s files and I’m not stupid but… were Tony and Pepper my biological parents?”

Bruce smiled. “Yes, they were. The hair didn’t let you know?”

Pippin shrugged. “Yeah, I guess. But they also were…”

“Yes.” Bruce waited for the realization.

“But then—“ Her eyes lit up and Bruce grinned. “Oh my God. Really? Tony?”

Bruce laughed.

“He was totally insufferable pregnant, wasn’t he?” Pippin laughed and finished her champagne.

Bruce put an arm around her shoulders and started them towards the stairs back down. “Obviously.”

\- - -

Pulling his arms around Bruce on one side and Pepper on the other, Tony practically purred as he kissed them each in turn. “We’ll miss you, Bruce,” he said, rubbing the other man’s hair.

“It’s just for the weekend, Jesus,” Bruce said, but blushed and kissed them both anyway. “I’ll see you on Monday.”

Pepper kissed him long and slow. “Take good care of Pippin while we’re gone. And don’t let her stay up too late.”

“But how will I be the cool one if I don’t let her up past her bedtime?”

Tony smiled and winked. “Starks don’t _really_ have bedtimes.”

“Yes, they do, especially when they are eight,” Pepper said with a glare shot at Tony, who just shrugged.

“Alright, alright. Now get going,” Bruce said, waving them and their suitcases out the door. “I love you both,” he called after them as they got into the limo to the airport.

The warmth of their last hugs lingered on his clothes as he waved goodbye for what he didn’t yet know would be the last time.

**Author's Note:**

> Expect more writing from me in this kids universe maybe... MCU is the fandom I just can't leave.


End file.
